Communicable Diseases

Data was obtained from the Joint DG SANCO / Eurostat Questionnaire (1981-2005) for The First European Communicable Disease Epidemiological Report, produced by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), except for data on tuberculosis, which was provided by the EuroTB Centre (supported by the European Commission) until 2007. From 2006 onwards, the ECDC started to collect data on communicable diseases. Since 1 January 2008, the ECDC and the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) have been jointly coordinating the tuberculosis surveillance activities in Europe. In calculating the incidence of disease per year, the numerator is the total number of reported cases in a specific year, whilst the denominator is the sum of the population of the countries that were reported in that year per 100 000.

Under Commission Decision 2000/96/EC of 22 December 1999, the EU agreed to set up a network at Community level to monitor the incidence of a certain number of specific communicable diseases. In selecting diseases to be covered by epidemiological surveillance within an EU network, the criteria included: (1) diseases that cause, or have the potential to cause, significant morbidity and/or mortality across the Community; (2) diseases where the exchange of information may provide early warning of threats to public health; (3) rare and serious diseases which would not be recognised at national level and where the pooling of data would allow hypothesis generation from a wider knowledge base; and (4) diseases for which effective preventive measures are available with a protective health gain.

The Commission Decision 2002/253/EC of 19 March 2002 (and subsequent modifications) lays down the compulsory case definitions for reporting these communicable diseases to the Community network.